A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  "Welcome, Prince Dracula! Or is it Citizen Dracula now? It is more than a year since you have visited me."

  Radu made himself comfortable, choosing the softest-looking of two available chairs. "Suit yourself as to the form of address; I am indifferent as to which my true friends use—and I certainly hope to count the Marquis de Sade among my friends. Or do you now prefer to be called citizen, along with everyone else?"

  The Marquis was undoubtedly glad to see his mysterious visitor. At Radu's entrance to his neatly furnished cell, Sade had been seated (in his third chair) at a table, playing with a set of half a dozen little toys on the tabletop. Radu, looking at them with curiosity, observed that they were tiny waxen representations of human bodies, male and female, all naked, in various attitudes of fear, or menace. The two male figures, one a mere beardless youth, were both in a prominent state of sexual arousal. It was not the subject matter so much which interested the vampire—he thought that pretty tame—but the artist's skill at modeling on such a small scale. The whole body of each figure was no longer than a man's hand, and yet all the fine anatomical details were exquisitely rendered. Real, fine human hair had been affixed in little tufts in the appropriate places.

  "You are interested in my little toys, prince? Ah, I yearn for the full collection I had with me when I was in the Bastille. There was a prison for you!"

  "Not for me, thanks."

  "They are frightfully expensive. But what is one to do? One must have amusement."

  Radu observed him fondling the figures ardently. The pale fingers of the Marquis threatened to crush the wax, and must be heating it to slipperiness.

  Radu raised an eyebrow. "I admit I am surprised that a man of your character must now content himself with wax images. Surely some of your fellow inmates here are women?"

  "Ahh…"

  "Or at least some of the visitors. And the men here must have sisters and daughters and wives. It would be easy to induce some of these fair ones to make themselves available for your enjoyment."

  "Ah, one would think so! But no, prince, it is not that easy. Besides, as I am sure you would agree, one needs to be sequestered with the women to derive the utmost of pleasure from them—and nothing short of the uttermost in delight is worthy of a gentleman's devoted efforts. Do you agree, Prince?"

  "The Marquis speaks wisdom, as always."

  Radu's gaze returned to the little waxen figures.

  "And who made these, my friend?" he asked. "They show great skill."

  "Ah, yes." The former marquis gazed at the images fondly. "At the Cabinet du Cire, number twenty, Boulevard du Temple. You do not know the establishment? A man named Curtius is in charge—he runs it with a woman who is supposed to be his niece. Who models these miniatures I am not sure. Most of the waxen figures Curtius makes himself are lifesize, and, alas, fully clothed."

  "I see. Yes, perhaps I have heard something." He suppressed a yawn; an affectation, now grown to be an unconscious habit, in one who was not required to breathe. In fact fits of yawning came upon him periodically. He supposed it had something to do with boredom; or possibly with his long sleeps and nightmares. Another thing he must remember to thank his brother for, as soon as the opportunity arose.

  "Prince Radu?"

  "Yes?"

  The Marquis urgently, stumblingly, began to plead with the prince to arrange an escape for him. Radu smiled and nodded, and promised to see what he could do; but actually he had plenty of other things to think about just now, and foresaw that he would let the matter slide.

  From the subject of escape and its difficulties, the conversation easily slid on to that of prisons. Radu was honestly curious. "But you have been in so many prisons! Are you able to keep track of them all?"

  "Each has a different smell about it… It is totally unjust, of course, that I should be here at all!"

  Ah, but I have heard something about the case. The young woman did die, did she not, after you and your valet were through with her?"

  "Which young woman?" Sade seemed affronted. "Not all of them died, by any means!"

  Radu was ready to change the subject. "Comfortable quarters," he observed, looking about the room. "Of course it does not really compare to those you enjoyed in the Bastille, as a prisoner of the ancien regime. If memory serves me right, you had a desk there, and a wardrobe. Silk breeches, many shirts, coats, shoes, and boots… you had a fireplace, as I recall? Family portraits on your plastered walls, velvet pillows on your bed."

  "Three kinds of perfume," Sade himself murmured in a husky voice. Eyes gleaming, he was caught up in memory. "All the lamps and candles that I wanted… but that was long ago. In 1784."

  "Is it really ten years since you were first locked up in the Bastille? How time flies! For some of us, at least." Radu pretended to suppress a yawn.

  Sade was staring at him, with a delightfully perfect expression of hatred and envy.

  Radu went on: "You had quite a library there, too. More than a hundred volumes, wasn't it? And your poor, dear wife was allowed to visit you almost every week. Walking privileges in the garden… except that you would keep shouting your obscenities." Radu shook his head, chided his companion with a mock tut-tut. "Then they let you out. Then they locked you up again. That time—let me see—they put you in Charenton? The asylum."

  "But they realized I was not at all mad, and they eventually let me go."

  "And then—?

  de Sade's voice had grown tightly controlled. His best courtroom voice. "Last year I was arrested again. As a former aristocrat, of course. Bah!"

  "So, political reasons this time. Even you… now that you mention it, I seem to remember hearing that you were accused of 'moderatism'… one of the most unlikely charges that the Revolution has ever brought against any of its enemies—or do you count yourself among its friends? Has anyone ever died of 'moderatism,' I wonder?"

  "Only when Doctor Sanson treats the disease! Ah, hah, hah hah!" A huge coarse laugh.

  But de Sade was not minded to discuss that subject at any length. Instead, he began to talk of his present accommodations: "What more could I have wanted here? It was like a paradise; beautiful house, superb garden, exclusive society, wonderful women—when suddenly the execution grounds were placed absolutely under our windows and the cemetery for those guillotined put in the very middle of our garden."

  Doubtless, Radu mused, Paris now produced too many headless ones for any one cemetery to accommodate.

  His companion was becoming unreasonably excited. "I tell you, prince, there have been eighteen hundred executions under my window in the last thirty-five days. A third of them have been taken from this very building!"

  "Eighteen hundred!" That really seemed an excessive estimate to Radu; he reminded himself that he was, after all, talking to a certified madman. Of course there might really be some auxiliary mechanique somewhere in the neighborhood. They were scattered all over France, after all.

  Radu had not observed any such facility on his way in, or scented any nearby tract of blood-soaked earth. Now he went to the window and looked out, seeing only a garden. He concluded that his old associate was very likely genuinely deranged.

  Meanwhile de Sade had let his outrage slide away and begun fantasizing about the young nuns who must have occupied this room before the Revolution.

  "How many novices do you suppose slept in this little chamber?" Actually the room was generously sized indeed, compared to the vast majority of the prison cells Radu had seen. de Sade seemed totally caught up in his speculations. "Three or four, at the very least. Maybe five or six. Do you suppose that it was necessary for them to share beds?"

  Radu shook his head. "I too have slept in convents from time to time; but none of them were organized in any such fashion as that. But do go on. There is no reason why you should give up your daydreams."

  "Daydreams, are they? Only daydreams?" de Sade's eyes flashed. "I should think that maintaining discipline in a convent would be one of the chief concerns of the aut
horities in charge."

  "No doubt. You might have done well, I should think, as Mother Superior."

  "Why do you say that? Women are more inclined to cruelty than we men are, and that is because they have a more delicate nervous system."

  Suddenly the man sat back on his haunches and bellowed, a long, quavering note. Perhaps he thinks he is a werewolf now, thought his visitor, intrigued.

  Then the crouching figure shouted: "Hear me, world! It is the Marquis de Sade, cavalry colonel, who is being subjected to such abominable treatment! Deprived of air and light! Rally round, my friends! To rescue me will be in the interest of all!"

  Then abruptly de Sade fell silent, and went back to staring at his wax dolls on the table.

  Already Radu was bored by the little figures. He picked one up, the blond girl-doll he thought the madman had been particularly admiring, and crushed it in his hand, reducing it to a smear of pink wax oozing between his fingers. de Sade made a sound like that of a victim under some probing stab by a torturer. Radu could derive faint amusement from the expression on de Sade's face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hoping to discover the whereabouts of the newly arrested Radcliffe as quickly as possible, I stood before a Parisian wall which had been dedicated to the posting of Revolutionary news.

  I had thought there might be a good chance of finding the name I sought on some freshly published list of those under arrest for crimes against the people—or under sentence of death, which now very nearly amounted to the same thing. But nothing on the board before me suggested that such lists were currently being displayed—if they ever had been. With the daily number of executions in Paris alone now in double digits and mounting steadily higher, perhaps the people in charge of the paperwork of terror were finding it increasingly difficult to keep up.

  My weary gaze focused upon one of the placards on the wall. It was actually only one of a number of authoritarian proclamations, some of the older specimens overlapped and almost entirely covered by the new. Though they dealt with different subjects, all were similar in tone:

  A portion of the treacherous suspects being held in our prisons have been eliminated by the people, vigilant in the cause of freedom; and it is certain that the entire nation, driven to desperate measures by continuous conspiracies, will be inspired to pursue the same course. All will cry out with one voice: Our soldiers who go to fight the enemy must be secure in the knowledge that they do not leave thieves and murderers behind them, to prey upon their helpless wives and children.

  It was signed by Marat and others. The cardboard was severely weatherworn in places, a reminder that Marat had been assassinated almost a year ago, a long time indeed when one was measuring the pace of Revolutionary events. Many of the other signatures were illegible.

  I felt a chill of foreboding on behalf of Radcliffe—and for my vow that I would save his life. I would have to act with dispatch to free my benefactor, who might well face not only the threat of la mechanique, but the less predictable chance of another wave of prisoner-slaughtering by mobs.

  But of course my first step must be to learn exactly where the unlucky wretch was being held. There were more than a dozen prisons now in the metropolitan area of Paris, with new ones being improvised, as it seemed, almost daily, and prisoners sometimes shuttled from one to another. I might conceivably search for days without finding the man I sought.

  It was one of those times when the demands of honor grip a man like a migraine headache, an undeserved punishment from which there can be no escape. I had as yet no evidence that Radu was out to frustrate my purpose, or even that he was aware of Radcliffe's arrest or of my commitment to the American's welfare. But where Radu is concerned it is always wisest to assume the worst.

  Several hours passed before I saw the silver lining of the cloud: It dawned on me that I might be able to use Radcliffe as bait to trap Radu.

  * * *

  I had tried several methods, including hypnosis, of interrogating Old Jules. But even so the willing and faithful servant could do little more than blubber helplessly. I could not extract from him information which was not in his possession. He had no idea to which prison his newly adopted Citizen Master had been taken.

  It began to look as if I might be forced to look through all of the rapidly proliferating Parisian prisons cell by cell, a procedure which would take days, days my client probably could not spare. Unless I could find some shortcut, magical or otherwise. I might have attempted some variety of sorcery, had I had in my possession anything—a piece of clothing, a lock of hair—which had been in close personal contact with Philip. But nothing of the kind was available.

  My thoughts next turned to the young woman, Melanie Remain, who obviously had some fairly close relationship with the man I was determined to protect. I did not really believe that they were simply old friends, as she had claimed. And now I regretted my carelessness in failing to find out more about her when I had had the chance.

  I thought about her. About Melanie Remain, the practical, kindly doctor's daughter, whose mysterious job required her to work in a churchyard in the dead of night, briskly doing inexplicable things with freshly decapitated heads. She had told me that the older woman who shared her midnight labors was her teacher, Marie Grosholtz… but her teacher in what craft or art?

  Of one thing I was certain, having had my knowledge confirmed by Old Jules: Melanie had accompanied Radcliffe to Paris. And the elderly servant, after their party had reached the city, had heard Melanie give the young man the same Parisian address I had happened to overhear—Number 20, Boulevard du Temple.

  Well, the key to what success I enjoy usually lies in instincts and hunches, not in logic. It is somewhere away from the paths of science and reason that I will find my salvation, if I ever do. I might have taken other pathways to attempt to locate my savior in his own hour of need; but somehow this one beckoned.

  Looking for the address, I made my way on foot at dusk along the tree-lined boulevard, passing the building which had housed the once-famous English circus, now shuttered and apparently fallen on hard times. A number of theaters were in the same neighborhood.

  The establishment I was seeking turned out to be a large house, three stories high, with a covered porch in front. The building fronted closely on the street but possessed spacious grounds in the rear. On the front of the house a sign, large and brightly painted but with a certain dignity, announced an enterprise headed by Dr. Curtius: a wax museum.

  And at last, belatedly, comprehension came.

  Not wishing particularly to be observed, since it was by then after public viewing hours at the Cabinet du Cire, I entered the grounds at the rear. The habitation effect proved too weak to prevent my uninvited entrance to the museum portion of the building, though no doubt the actual living quarters would have been denied me.

  Moments later, rummaging about at random, I found myself inside a locked and otherwise deserted storeroom. Here light was almost nonexistent, yet for my eyes quite adequate.

  There I paused, marveling. I had thought that, after three hundred years of life, there was no longer much in the world that could surprise me. But I had been wrong.

  Of course, after only a moment's shock, I understood what the figures were. But still they were surprising. The lopped-off heads of Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were looking at me from a shelf. Some eyeblink fraction of a second passed before I was entirely sure that they were only wax, glass-eyed and painted with great realism.

  The modeled heads of royalty, in keeping with the times, were stored in an inconspicuous position on a low shelf. Other celebrities of the past, great and small, were stacked until their time should come again; and the elaborate costumes usually worn by many of these figures had, as I discovered later, been folded away and locked in trunks. A few were stored hanging up, and thus were easier to see. The most popular feature of the museum, to judge by the amount of space allotted, in notices and on the floor, was the Caverne des Grands Vo
leurs, a display of images of executed criminals.

  A great many visitors of all kinds came through the museum every day that it was open. It was evidently nothing unusual for some of the customers to wander into the adjoining work areas and semidetached living quarters. None of the residents or workers were particularly surprised this early in the evening, so soon after closing time, to see a stranger poking about in their midst.

  Politely I enquired of several workers for Melanie Remain, but for my trouble received only shrugs and thoughtful looks conveying cautious ignorance.

  Attracted by a peculiar, small, mechanical noise issuing from a kind of workyard behind the house, I turned my steps in that direction. A moment later my eye fell upon the small form of a ten-year-old boy, raggedly clad in appropriate Revolutionary style, who was sitting by himself in a small veranda just outside the main building. I noted at once that the lad's features displayed an arresting resemblance to those of the woman I was trying to find. The likeness was so definite that I felt sure at once it was not accidental.

  Casually I strolled in his direction, and observed what he was playing with. Or perhaps I should say, more accurately, what he was working on.

  In the small model machine there lay a small wax doll, clumsily made from scraps by his own childish fingers, standing by in an attitude of sturdy indifference, ready to be beheaded. Whatever the lad's talents were to be in life, I thought, sculpture did not seem to be among them.

  "What is your name, my lad?"

  "Auguste." He was a dark and brooding child, evidently quite at home in this place.

  Accustomed as I was to observing human faces change with age, and to observing several generations of a family in sequence, it was no great feat for me to convince myself beyond a doubt that small Auguste was a blood relative of Melanie Remain. My next thought was to consider whether this was likely to be her son. The age difference between them seemed not too small to make the relationship impossible.

  "That seems an interesting game that you are playing."